One of the strange things that happens to some (though not all) women during pregnancy is 'nesting'.
Obviously the nesting instinct is named after the behaviour of birds, but is common to most species. For humans, it typically occurs around the fifth month and is an uncontrollable urge to clean the house. It may also present itself as a need to tidy up loose ends.
Aapparently it's common for women to go a bit OTT when the nesting instinct kicks in. I've read reports of women taking the knobs off their kitchen cupboards to disinfect the screws. I've read of women throwing out every item of linen, including nearly new stuff, to replace it with new stuff. A woman who moved everything out of the bedroom in order to clean it, and then moved it back. Some crazy things!
So, K___ is just into her 20th week this week and yesterday, we went to Homebase where she looked at bathroom suites. However, I'm loathe to say this is 'nesting' because it's something we'd talked about for ages. We need to get a whole bunch of DIY things done about the house. Is this 'nesting'? I don't see it is.
Why should nesting even be a syndrome? Despite the daft stories above, for most people, it's simply a case of getting the house in order. That's not a syndrome though. That would be like saying going out and buying food for a dinner party is a syndrome. No - it's preparation. I could understand that you might want a name when it gets to the stage of chucking out good linen, but otherwise, is it really worthy of a name?
I never felt like I was nesting during pregnancy either. I just felt like I wanted to get ready.
ReplyDeleteI would say now that my oldest is 4, I am nesting finally...older kids seem to need more stuff and places to put the stuff.
Also I get them to clean up after themselves by reminding them that they like to have a beautiful house...so I need to try to make it a beautiful house!